situation:The method of execution is injection. The prisoner can eventually choose the gas chamber. The sentence is determined by a jury. Death row is located at San Quentin (Women: Chowchilla). As for the clemency process, the Governor has sole authority to grant clemency.
On December 15, 2006,US District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled that California's method of lethal injection for executions was unconstitutional. Fogel ruled the state's use of lethal injection, a combination of chemicals meant to sedate, end breathing, and stop the heart creates a "risk that an inmate will suffer pain so extreme that it offends the Eighth Amendment,'' which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
California's “implementation of lethal injection is broken, but it can be fixed,'' Fogel said in the ruling. With its ruling, Judge Fogel temporary halted all the executions.

California’s 737 death row inmates get reprieve from Governor Gavin Newsom. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is halting the execution of 737 death row inmates on the nation’s largest death row Wednesday. He will issue an executive order granting a reprieve to each one of the state’s 737 inmates, for at least as long as he’s governor. his office told the Associated Press. He’s also withdrawing the lethal injection regulations that death penalty opponents have already tied up in court. And he’s shuttering the new execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison that has never been used. California hasn’t executed anyone since 2006, under then-Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and inmates are far more likely to die of old age. Since then, the death row population has grown to house one of every four condemned inmates in the United States. The state’s voters have narrowly supported the death penalty, most recently in 2016 when they voted to speed up the process. Newsom’s office said he can act unilaterally because he’s enacting a moratorium, not changing anyone’s sentence. He’s not commuting any death sentences, which in many cases would require agreement from the state Supreme Court. A governor needs approval from the state Supreme Court to pardon or commute the sentence of anyone twice convicted of a felony, and the justices last year blocked several clemency requests by former Gov. Jerry Brown. While the governor’s move is certain to be challenged in court, aides cite his power to grant reprieves written into the state Constitution. “I do not believe that a civilized society can claim to be a leader in the world as long as its government continues to sanction the premeditated and discriminatory execution of its people,” Newsom said in prepared remarks. “In short, the death penalty is inconsistent with our bedrock values and strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a Californian.” He called the death penalty “a failure” that “has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown, or can’t afford expensive legal representation.” He also argues that it doesn’t act as a deterrent, wastes taxpayer dollars and is flawed because it is “irreversible and irreparable in the event of human error.” California has spent $5 billion since 1978 on its death row, he said. “The intentional killing of another person is wrong,” he said, “and as governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual.” His office said more than six in 10 condemned California inmates are minorities, citing racial disparities in who is sentenced to die. And it said five condemned California inmates were eventually exonerated since 1973. California is the sixth state in which a governor has enacted a moratorium. Republican Illinois Gov. George Ryan was the first to do so in 2000, though Illinois has since abolished the death penalty. The governors of Pennsylvania, Washington and Oregon have imposed moratoriums on executions, and the former Colorado governor refused to execute someone on death row. The state’s new governor supports a repeal bill in the Legislature. Newsom, a Democrat, told reporters earlier this month that he “never believed in the death penalty from a moral perspective,” also citing ethical and economic concerns. He said he’s campaigned “vigorously” for the last two ballot measures where voters rejected repealing the death penalty. “The disparities are very real and raw to me now especially as I spend every week working on the issues of paroles and commutations,” he said. Newsom cited one offender serving a sentence of 57 years to life for injuring three people, while another offender was sentenced to 17 years to life for a double murder: “One happened to be of one race, one happened to be another race. Other people I’ve seen literally put to death for lesser crimes, and that concerns me.” Seventy-nine condemned California inmates have died of natural causes since California reinstated capital punishment in 1978. Another 26 committed suicide. California has executed 13 inmates, while two were executed in other states. Newsom’s office said 25 condemned inmates have exhausted all of their appeals and could soon have faced execution if the courts approved the state’s new lethal injection method.

(Source: Associated Press, 12/03/2019)

08 March 2019 :

Juan Corona, California’s most prolific serial killer, dies of natural causes. Corona died Monday morning in a hospital, more than four decades after he hacked to death 25 farmworkers and buried most of them in a prune orchard near Yuba City in Sutter County, prison officials announced. Corona, 85, born in Mexico, was serving 25 concurrent life sentences after being convicted of 25 counts of 1st-degree murder. There was no death penalty in California when he was sentenced in 1973. Corona was denied parole 8 times since 1984 and was next eligible for a hearing in 2021. In May 1971, authorities found 25 mutilated bodies of male, middle-aged farmworkers in orchards along the Feather River in Sutter County. Many of the victims lived on a Marysville skid row and were considered “fruit tramps,” men who would follow the orchard harvests finding work. Corona was tried in Colusa County and found guilty in January 1973. 5 years later, his conviction was overturned by an appellate court and he won a new trial. His second trial was held in Alameda County, and he was again convicted of all 25 murders in 1982. Authorities have said over the years that Corona’s body count could be higher, and his name is likely to be brought up when a body is uncovered in Sutter County.

(Source: San Francisco Chronicle, 04/03/2019)

26 February 2019 :

Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered that more extensive DNA testing be performed in the case of death-row prisoner Kevin Cooper. Cooper has long maintained his innocence of the 1983 quadruple murder for which he was sentenced to death. (See also December 24, 2018).

(Source: DPIC, 22/02/2019)

25 February 2019 :

Freddie Taylor, 58, Black, freed from Death Row nearly 33 years after conviction. A man who spent nearly 33 years awaiting execution on California’s death row took his first steps as a free man Wednesday, following an appeals court decision that overturned the death sentence and raised questions about his mental state during trial. At age 25, Freddie Taylor was convicted for the Jan. 22, 1985 murder of an 84-year-old widow, Carmen Carlos Vasquez, who was brutally raped and beaten to death inside of her Richmond home. For years, Taylor filed legal motions asking for a new trial on the grounds that the court had ignored obvious indications he was incompetent to stand trial. Taylor had a lifelong history of mental illness, along with diagnoses of paranoid schizophrenia, brain damage and borderline personality disorder. Taylor was denied a new trial by state courts. But in 2016, a federal judge ruled in his favor, in a decision affirmed by the Ninth Circuit on December 31, 2018 (see). The appeals court affirmed the 2016 decision, ruling there was insufficient evidence on the record to retroactively assess Taylor’s mental health at the time. From there, Contra Costa prosecutors had 60 days to decide if they wanted to retry Taylor. Instead, they offered him the deal. On Wednesday, prosecutors offered Taylor freedom, agreeing to a plea deal that would reduce his sentence to time served in exchange for pleading guilty to a manslaughter charge. Taylor, now 58, was released from jail Wednesday afternoon. At the time of the murder, Taylor was identified as a suspect after his fingerprints were found on a door and a plexiglass window. But Taylor had burglarized Vasquez’s home days earlier, which gave him a plausible explanation for why fingerprints were at the scene. Jurors are instructed during trial that if there are two reasonable theories behind the evidence, and one points to innocence, they must adopt it rather than convict the defendant. That, along with the lack of DNA and the fact that several police witnesses had died, weakened the prosecution’s case for a retrial.

(Source: East Bay Times, 20/02/2019)

27 February 2019 :

James Hardy was freed after pleading guilty to two counts of first-degree murder in exchange for a suspended sentence and release on probation. Hardy, now 63, White, was arrested in May 1981 for participating in the brutal murders of Nancy Morgan and her son Mitchell. He was sentenced to death by a Los Angeles jury on Sept. 26, 1983, and by a judge in 1984. Hardy was tried along with two co-defendants, Mark Reilly and Clifford Morgan, the husband and father of the victims. Clifford was convicted of hiring Reilly and Hardy to kill his family so he could collect insurance money. Prosecutors argued that Hardy was the actual killer and Reilly the middleman in the conspiracy. On appeal, Hardy argued that his trial attorney had been ineffective because he had failed to investigate or present evidence that the prosecution’s key witness was actually the killer. On JULY 26, 2007 (see) the California Supreme Court overturned Hardy’s death sentence, which was later ri-determined in a life without parole sentence. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit later (August 11, 2016) overturned his conviction, writing, “Hardy’s attorney failed him, and the State of California failed Hardy by putting a man on the stand that it should have known committed the crime.” The court said, “there is a substantial likelihood that the jury would not have convicted Hardy had his trial lawyer performed effectively.” Rather than retry Hardy, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office agreed to a plea deal. The deal makes him ineligible for DPIC’s Innocence List.

(Source: DPIC, 27/02/2019)

06 February 2019 :

California Supreme Court reverses death sentence of Jamelle Edward Armstrong. In a 4-3 decision, the California Supreme Court reversed the death sentence of Armstrong, 38, Black, 1 of 3 men on death row for the Dec. 29, 1998 rape and beating death of 43-year-old Penny Sigler, also known as Penny Keprta. Armstrong was sentenced to death on July 16, 2004 in Los Angeles County. A majority of justices agreed that several prospective jurors were improperly excused from the trial panel.

(Source: Press-Telegram, 04/02/2019)

07 January 2019 :

In the last capital habeas decision of 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has upheld a district court order granting of a new trial to Freddie Lee Taylor, 30 years after he was convicted and sentenced to death. The grant of relief was based upon the state court's failure to conduct a competency hearing at the time of trial and the impossibility of conducting a retroactive competency hearing today. Taylor, now 58, was sentenced to death in Contra Costa County on May 30, 1986 for beating to death Carmen Carlos Vasquez, an 84-year-old widow, on January 22, 1985.

Hands off Cain is an international league of citizens and parliamentarians for the abolition of the death penalty in the world. It is a non-profit, non-violent, transnational and trans-national Partito Radicale founded in Brussels in 1993 and recognized in 2005 by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a development co-operation NGO.